Date of Award

Spring 2026

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Academic Program

English BA

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Joyce Inman

Advisor Department

English

Abstract

This honors thesis examines how reproduction and food are used to signify power and impact female identity in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale and Octavia Butler’s Dawn. Both feminist dystopian novels portray societies that secure futurity through the commodification and management of women's domestic labor. The protagonist of each novel, Offred in The Handmaid's Tale and Lilith in Dawn, is responsible for ensuring the survival of humanity through forced reproduction and is additionally expected to produce or manage food. In this thesis, I argue that in both novels, female identity is reclaimed and affirmed as separate from a commodified state through the resistant use of sexual acts and food. In both texts, systems of power attempt to reduce the female main character into a position of servitude, redefining her based on her domestic function. Both women combat this rhetoric through actions denied them in their commodified states: pleasure from sexual acts and food. Their resistance is not revolutionary but persists through the reclamation of bodily experience and independent interiority. Feminist dystopian fiction warns of what happens if women are viewed as the sum of their domestic work, and this precedent of resistance makes way for the resistance and reordering of today. Just as Offred and Lilith maintain personal identity by operating outside of their assigned roles, modern women can find a personal understanding of female identity through questioning societal boundaries and expectations.

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